"Maybe in football and basketball, it would work better if more kids had a chance to go directly into the professional ranks," he told several reporters Wednesday, including ESPN's Adam Rittenberg. "If they're not comfortable and want to monetize, let the minor leagues flourish. Train at IMG, get agents to invest in your body, get agents to invest in your likeness, and establish it on your own. But don't come here and say, 'We want to be paid $25,000 or $50,000.' Go to the D-League and get it, go to the NBA and get it, go to the NFL and get it.

Jim Delany used to be a proponent of cost-of-attendance stipends, but now he no longer favors them. (AP Photo)

"You don't have to play for the Redskins or the Bears at 17, but you could develop (at) IMG. My gosh, there are lots of trainers out there. There are quarterback coaches teaching passing skills, guys lifting weights, guys training and running. They can get as strong and as fast in that environment as they can in this environment. Plus, they don't have to go to school. Plus, they can sell their likeness and do whatever they want to do. We don't want to do that. What we want to do is do what we've been doing for 100 years.

"I think we ought to work awful hard with the NFL and the NBA to create an opportunity for those folks. We have it in baseball, we have it in golf, works pretty good, we have it in golf, we have it in hockey. Why don't we have it in football, basketball? Why is it our job to be minor leagues for professional sports?"

He said all of this, on the record. So you can grab onto these words and write the headline that Delany believes the NBA and NFL should be creating minor leagues for the development of their players. You wouldn't be wrong. But you'd be missing the point.

You can grab onto these words and write the headline that Delany insists college athletics won't be turning into professional sports, and you'd be closer to the target.

If you parse through everything he said, however, the message at the core of Delany's statement is simple: What we're offering is a great deal. We believe we can and should make it better, but it's been a great deal for half a century and will continue to be precisely that into the future. If someone successfully sues and the court system orders that we change the deal, we'll cope with that when it comes. But we're not interested in sponsoring a professional sports league.

"If you think it's about you, then talk to John Havlicek about that. You've got to talk to Michael Jordan about that. These brands have been built over 100 years," Delany said.

"I don't view it as a labor force. I view them as athletes, as students. I view the universities and the brands that have been here for 118 years. It's built by predecessors, from Isiah Thomas to Magic Johnson to John Havlicek to Archie Clark to Red Grange."

Delany has argued strongly in favor of the cost-of-attendance scholarships that were approved in 2011 but later rescinded in what amounted to a "recall" vote by the broad Division I membership. COA grants as approved would provide $2,000 stipends to athletes who were on full scholarship.

The withdrawal of that approval led to the recent declarations by conference commissioners such as the SEC's Mike Slive and Big 12's Bob Bowlsby that major college leagues might need their own governance structure. NCAA president Mark Emmert acknowledged this week there likely will be some immediate changes in how the organization makes and passes rules, although no specifics have been identified.

"We can't do Title IX and have professional sports in basketball and football, and have lots of opportunities. It's not going to work. It just doesn't fit," Delany said. "But we should do what we can do, which is kids are full-time students, which means they want to be here, which means they prefer to be here. If you would prefer to be somewhere else, we should encourage the sports organizations that benefit from that to find a way to change it. I don't know if they will or they won't. That's not my call. But we could be successful if there were minor-league football and basketball, if there were kids who decided to go that route."

A full athletic scholarship is an enormous benefit, providing education, living expenses, expert physical conditioning, training in the sport by experienced coaches, promotion to the public for those who'll go professional and medical care for those who are injured. USA Today once estimated the value at roughly $120,000, and their formula seemed to underrate the value of publicity for the most successful athletes.

Delany's message is quite clear: take that deal or leave it; our programs will get along fine either way.